Bornean Families

Intention

This web site was created to summarize results of a joint research project of the two authors and to promote the knowledge of East Malaysian frogs and toads.

We want to give you the best images available for identification of both frogs and their larval forms. We provide some basic biological information and help you to access additional knowledge.

The starting years of the project were funded by Volkswagen Foundation Germany. Please see Sponsors section for acknowledgements.

Images and Copyrights

Please read some comments about the imagery on this website here >Photos

Understand copyrights before you intend to make use of images or information on these web pages.

Background

We conceptualized the "Tadpoles of Borneo" project beginning 2001. After two years of exploring potential study sites and talking to authorities, we succeeded in getting funded for this biodiversity project by the Volkswagen Foundation.

The basic idea was to build an inventory of all Bornean tadpoles. Others researchers had already contributed to that field, but there were still lots of gaps in the records. Furthermore we wanted to provide more detailed descriptions, for example color images of all species for rapid identification.

In many cases we performed tadpole matching by genetic barcoding (16S gene) for correct species assignment of larvae.

The project has not come to completion yet. Tadpoles of some species still remain unknown (or misidentified) and new species continue to emerge.

Mapping Server

We thank the Amphibia Web consortium for letting us link to their species distribution mapping through BerkeleyMapper services.

The generated maps are based on museum specimen locations. It depends on available data and may not depict the full distributional range of a given species. As more point records become available, mapping will better match actual distributions of species.

Sponsors

We thank the following institutions:

Volkswagen Foundation Germany

Swiss Academy of Sciences

Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS)

IBEC (Institute for Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation)

University Malaysia Sabah: ITBC

Universität Hamburg

Natural History Museum Berne

Economic Planning Unit

Sabah Parks

Forest Department of Sarawak

National Parks Staff

The support by our commercial sponsor is gratefully acknowledged: Zweibrüder Optoelectronics